John Ivison: Now the choice is a Harper majority or Harper minority

As he left the set following the leaders’ debate in Ottawa Tuesday, Stephen Harper was overheard saying he had found it “pretty easy”.

For Mr. Harper, the debates were like whitewater rapids — to be navigated taking as few risks as possible. He won — four out of 10 viewers thought he won the English debate, according to an Ipsos Reid flash poll — because he avoided being swept away by the current created by the opposition leaders and stuck to his own message of low taxes, jobs creation and economic growth. Michael Ignatieff performed strongly in his role as the official critic of Mr. Harper’s performance, but fell short of persuading people that he would make a better prime minister. In the Ipsos flash poll, twice as many people thought Mr. Harper sounded and acted like a prime minister than the Liberal leader.

The campaign may be only halfway through but, with the debates behind him — and at press time the French debate was just getting under way — Mr. Harper and his team can now now re-assess the landscape. They entered debate week with a 10-12 point lead and have likely consolidated that advantage in the debates.

Going into the campaign, the Conservatives game-played four scenarios for the last week — a strong majority, including Quebec; a majority with fewer MPs from Quebec; minority government; and a “save the furniture” effort that would funnel resources into winnable ridings. The fourth scenario has just fallen off the table. The campaign has just moved into a new phase and the remaining choices are between a Harper majority or a Harper minority.

The prospect of the former was greatly helped by Jack Layton’s performance at the debate. The NDP leader let loose with some good one-liners and the Ipsos Reid poll suggested that he was the biggest beneficiary in terms of improving his image with voters.

This is good news for the Tories, who were concerned about a slide in NDP support in Ontario.

If the Conservatives are to get to the magic number of 42% support, they need Mr. Layton at 17%, not 14%. An average of recent polls has the NDP at between 16-18%.

For the Conservatives, the road to majority runs through Ontario. Expectations are that the party will lose three or four Quebec City area seats to the Bloc Québécois but will make up for those in Atlantic Canada, with high hopes for two or three seats in Newfoundland, in particular.

They will probably augment that with another two or three in British Columbia. Vancouver South, Burnaby-Douglas and Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca on the southwest corner of Vancouver Island are all good bets.

But Ontario is where the Conservatives need to pile up the wins. There are Tory seats that may be vulnerable to the Grits – in particular Mississauga-Erindale and Kitchener Centre, where former Liberal whip Karen Redman is looking good for a return to the House of Commons. However, there are many more where a rising Conservative tide would carry already buoyant local campaigns over the top – against the NDP in Sault Ste. Marie and Welland; and against the Liberals in Mississauga South, Brampton-Springdale and Brampton West in the suburbs around Toronto, and in Ken Dryden’s riding of York Centre and Joe Volpe’s constituency of Eglinton-Lawrence in the city itself.

Mr. Harper has committed enough transgressions on the ethics and accountability file to justify his ejection from office by an angry electorate. But, as the Ipsos Reid poll taken after the debate suggests, Canadians are twice as concerned about the economy as they are about ethics. All the indicators suggest they believe the Conservative leader is the best man to guide the country back into budgetary surplus.

The Liberals, in one optimistic press release Wednesday, claimed they saw a campaign turning point during the debate when Mr. Ignatieff rebuffed the Prime Minister’s calls for voters to grant him a majority. “Majorities are things you earn when you earn the trust of Canadian people and you haven’t earned the trust of the Canadian people because you don’t trust the Canadian people,” he said.

But, in the absence of a real turning point, it looks like voters who have tired of minority government will judge it is the Liberals who haven’t earned the right to return to power just yet.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.